A Summer Nowhere

“Jobie, it was like a million degrees outside!” Sam whined. “I just wanted to cool off.”

I'd never been so mad at anybody in my whole life, and that included Dennis, Brad, and Heather all put together. Me and Sam were sitting at the kitchen table at Gary's house. He was at one end and Eileen was at the other and Sam and I were across from each other in the middle. The way we'd ended up there was that Gary and I were in the stables and I was just kinda sitting around, watching him finish sweeping up the place. All of a sudden, Sam shows up like she didn't just abandon me with some weird stranger two nights before. I wanted to scream my head off at her, but to tell the truth, I still had a little bit of a headache leftover and the day before I had been sick as a dog all day long.

At first, Gary was trying to be understanding. After all, he'd known Sam a lot longer than I had. And he was used to being a peacekeeper. He didn't want me to lose my best friend, and he didn't want Sam to lose hers. But the more she talked, the bigger a hole she dug for herself.

“And I knew you wouldn't want to go.” She continued, being a real asshole and rolling her eyes. “Because you never want to go anywhere.”

“So you just left her there?” Eileen shook her head. “By herself?”

Gary's mama was breaking my heart. She looked sad and confused and ready to go into mom mode at any minute. I'd been hanging out there all day and she'd been doting on me the whole time. She made a fresh pot of coffee as soon as I came through the door and she sat and rubbed my hair, trying to get me to have a good cry, but it just wouldn't come out. I felt like I needed it, but my eyes just didn't feel like tearing up, I guess.

“No.” Sam said. “Sandy's boyfriend's younger brother was around.”

“He was a creep!” I yelled at her, rubbing my temples.

“How was I supposed to know that?” Sam whined. “I don't even know him.”

“But it's okay to leave your best friend with him.” Gary surmised, looking at her like he wanted to wring her neck. “I get it.”

“We were coming right back.” Sam told me, laying her hands flat on the table in front of her. “I didn't know we'd end up being gone for so long. By the time we got back to the house, you'd already left.”

She wasn't even sorry and I didn't know if I wanted to scream or just slap her or both. Her first argument had been that everybody needed to cut her some slack. She said she'd been so upset over her and Chris breaking up that she thought we should all just overlook everything. And they'd already gotten back together, so I didn't know why she thought any of that had anything to do with anything. Lynn and Jenny said he'd called the whole night we were gone, begging to talk to her, thinking that they were just telling him she wasn't home because she was upset. By the time he got ahold of her the next day, everything was just fine.

I told her I didn't feel like talking to her or hearing her talk to me, so I got up and went to Gary's room. I could hear her all the way across the house, bawling like a baby like me being mad at her was the worst thing in the world, even though she hadn't even apologized because she didn't think she'd done anything wrong. When Gary came in and shut the door behind him, I couldn't hear her anymore.

“I'm sorry, baby.” He told me, kneeling by the bed where I was laying with both of my arms crossed over my face. “She'll come around.”

“I don't care if she comes around.” I lied, clearing my throat so he wouldn't know there was a lump in it. “I don't care if she never talks to me again.”

He didn't say anything for a while, but finally he climbed over me, laying down and tugging me close.

“I know what'll make you feel better.” He sang out. “But you've gotta uncover your face first.”

I yanked my arms down to my sides. “What?” I asked, turning my head to look at him.

He kissed me, first a little peck on the corner of my mouth, and then a softer, longer one. My muscles just reacted without me thinking about it and my hands were on the sides of his face. My fingertips brushed through his hair. He reached behind me with the hand he wasn't laying on and pushed against my back so I was just about as close as I could get.

Sometimes I worried that he didn't really want me as much as I wanted him. I knew he was crazy about me. Or maybe he was just crazy for liking me at all; I wasn't sure. But he was always nice to me and always wanted to take care of me and he smiled at me whenever he saw me and he always paid if we went on a date. But sometimes he just wasn't in the mood when I was and I was usually in the mood because he always made me that way. One time when I asked him about it, he said he felt the same way about me that I did about him, maybe even more, but that if we did nothing but do it all the time, he'd never get anything done.

But that day, he'd already gotten all the stuff he was supposed to get done done. He'd helped Papaw haul feed, he'd opened up the stable so the horses could get a good run, and he cleaned the stalls. All he had to do now was herd everybody back in, but he could do that just about any time. So when I hooked my leg over his hips, he reached down to hike it up a little bit and rolled on top of me.

I didn't know why having him there felt so good, but I figured it had something to do with how heavy he felt. If he felt heavy to me, then maybe I wasn't as heavy as I thought I was. It made me feel small and cute and safe. But the sound of his little brother stomping down the hall distracted me and it was Gary's turn to be frustrated. Every time something like this happened, he liked to remind me that it wouldn't be a problem when he had his own place, and that if I moved in with him—after I graduated, of course—we'd have just about all the alone time we wanted when he wasn't working.

“Let's go somewhere private.” He breathed into my ear, making me shiver all over like I was getting a cold chill.

We ended up taking the four wheeler out to the cabin and I couldn't help but think about how the last time we'd been out there together had been after that craziness that happened on the fourth of July. Of course, the air mattress had been deflated and packed back up, but I didn't mind. I'd sat on that floor about a million times, so laying a blanket out to lay on was no big deal. But the best part was when it started pouring down rain a few seconds after we got inside. It hadn't even been that cloudy, either. It was just like Mother Nature decided that our part of the world needed to get good and soaked all of a sudden.

It beat down against the windows and the door and darkened what was already a pretty dark place. The air got cooler and made me think of curling up with a cup of hot cocoa, even though it was still summer time. Gary stood behind me, his chin resting on the top of my head and his hands working their way up my shirt.

“You're so soft.” He said, spreading his fingers out across my belly, making me feel loved and self conscious at the same time.

I didn't know why, but I was just in awe of all the rain coming down and it made my mind race with a million different pictures. Most kids hate rainy days because it means they can't go outside and play, but I never wanted to go outside and play when I was a kid, so I always liked rainy days just fine. There was something real relaxing about a nice, heavy rainstorm. It washed everything away and made everything clean. I wondered if maybe that was the secret reason everybody hated going outside when it was raining, not because they didn't want to get wet, but because they didn't want to mess anything up.

One time, our Newfoundland Labrador mix Bear got his collar tangled up in some brambles behind the house and Sam acted like it was no big deal and ran out there to set him free in the pouring down rain. When she came back inside, she was soaking wet and looked like a mermaid, but she didn't seem to mind at all. She didn't even change clothes, she just sat at the kitchen table on a towel and finished the game of Monopoly we'd been playing.

I couldn't stay distracted by all that rain for too long, though. Gary was kissing on my neck and his hands had made their way under my bra and I could barely get a breath in or out. It made me wonder why girls were so scared of losing their virginity. Of course, I'd been one of those girls, too. But now I wasn't, and all those frazzled nerves didn't make any sense to me after. I couldn't think of anything that felt better. James and I had only done it once, and it was okay. But with Gary, it was my favorite thing to do. If I could get away with not doing anything else, I would. Now I kind of understood why Sam just up and abandoned me every time Chris wanted to spend time with her alone. If it ended up that I'd never even look at anybody but Gary for the rest of my life—if we were the last two people on the whole entire planet—I'd probably be okay with that.

I was pretty sure he thought so, too. I still wasn't really sure why he loved me so much, but I guessed we were kind of perfect for each other. Neither of us were very social and we both liked being quiet. But sometimes, when we felt like talking, we could talk for hours and hours and I wasn't sure why, but he was just about the easiest person to talk to I'd ever met. Sometimes even, if I wanted to talk to somebody else about something, but didn't know how or what to say, I'd talk to Gary about it and he'd coach me along or just tell me not to worry about it because some things were better left unsaid. That only ever happened once though, a little while back when we moved bedrooms and I wanted to tell Heather that she'd stolen my favorite pillow and replaced it with the one that had been on her bed, which was basically just as good, but I knew it wasn't mine because mine had a little permanent marker stain on the tag from where I'd dropped one.

Anyway, sometimes you find something fun to do and you kind of get sad because all of a sudden you think you've been wasting all this time doing other stuff that wasn't as good. That's how I felt about Gary. We'd had a lot of fun together back when he wasn't my boyfriend, but everything we did together was a hundred times better now that he was. Especially when he was on top of me, making me feel like I must've had the greatest thing on earth between my legs, which sounds gross when you say it out loud.

“You're so handsome.” I told him after we'd finished. We were laying in the floor on one of the blankets that Sam and I had started keeping down there. I was pressing up against him real close because I still didn't really love the idea of him seeing my whole body up close in the daylight. “It's not fair.”

When he looked down at me, his chin bumped into the top of my head and it made me lean back a little bit so our noses were rubbing together, like two Eskimos kissing.

“I'm not handsome.” He rolled his eyes and I saw his cheeks flush with a little bit of color. I laughed harder than I meant to because I'd never seen him blush before. He didn't think it was that funny, though. “What?”

“You don't think you're handsome?” I asked. “You've got mirrors in your house. I've seen 'em.”

“I think you think I'm handsome because I'm strong, I guess.” He told me, almost stuttering his words.

“You're crazy!” I shot straight up, yanking the blanket up to cover me. “You're crazy good looking, too.”

He rolled over onto his back, stealing back a little bit of the cover, maybe so I didn't think he was showing off his manhood on purpose.

“You never thought so before.” He said, looking at me like he was waiting for me to explain myself.

“That's not true.” I said, a little confused. “I didn't think you weren't handsome, I just...”

“Didn't see me that way?” He suggested when I stopped talking for a few seconds.

“I guess.” I shrugged my shoulders. “But it doesn't matter what I think. Everybody thinks you're good looking, Gary.”

“You're the only person I care about thinking I look good.” He told me, then asked, “Everybody who?”

“Oh, I don't know.” I shrugged. “Every girl that used to follow you around like a puppy at school.”

“What girls?” He asked, looking genuinely confused.

“All the girls, Gary.” I told him. “Every girl.”

“That's not true.” He argued, grabbing my arm and pulling me back down. “Anyway, if they followed me around, it's because they probably wanted me to lift something heavy.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “You're an idiot.”

“Then so are you.” He said. “Because you act like you're a toad or something and everybody else thinks you're gorgeous.”

That made the back of my throat tighten up and the backs of my eyes burn for some reason, like I wanted to cry and my whole body went stiff. It was a downright mean thing for him to say, since it wasn't true.

“What?” He asked, looking at me like I'd been staring at him or something.

“Nobody thinks I'm gorgeous.” I said, blinking real fast and correcting myself. “Except for you. Maybe.”

“What do you mean maybe?” He asked, like I'd greatly offended him. “You think I don't think you're beautiful?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged.

“Jobie.” He propped up on his elbow and looked up at me, holding onto my hip so I couldn't scoot away from him. “You don't know how people look at you. I know how people look at you.”

“What people?” I laughed, shaking my head.

He held up his hand and started ticking off his fingers. “Mike, James, Brad, a handful of other guys I've had to scare off. Everybody knows you're gorgeous but you. But they don't know your heart. That's the problem. They all want in your pants, but none of them are worthy of you.”

“What other guys?” I asked, not even bothering to pay attention to anything else he'd said. “Nobody ever once asked me out last year.”

Now he looked like he wanted to cry, like I'd slapped in the face, and I felt about two inches tall. I had to think real fast so I didn't keep saying stupid stuff and hurting his feelings.

“You're the first person that's ever been interested in me.” I told him, putting my hand on his cheek and nudging my nose against his. “I don't know what took you so long.”

“First of all,” He started to smile a little bit then. “I'm clearly not the only person that's ever been interested in you. I can tell you about at least three guys who've asked me if you were single. But that's besides the point.”

“Who were they?” I asked, laughing at him like he was crazy, because he must've been imagining things.

“Second of all,” He ignored me. “I was always interested, but I knew you were boy crazy and I didn't want you breaking my heart into a million pieces.”

“Why'd you tell Sam and not me?” I asked, leaning up and resting my chin on his chest, invested in the story now.

“I didn't really tell her, she just knew.” He scoffed, shaking his head like he didn't feel comfortable talking about it.

“And she said something to you?” I pressed.

“Yeah, I guess.” He was gnawing on his bottom lip now. “She kept asking me what I thought of you, I guess. And I told her you were alright, I guess. And I guess finally I just told her I thought you were the greatest thing ever and I was crazy in love and I guess she kept telling you about it and you didn't believe it until I had to say it to you myself.”

“Why are you so nervous?” I was laughing hard now, crossing my arms over his chest and burying my face in them. “You're so cute, Gary!”

“Shut up.” He rolled his eyes, trying not to break into a full grin. “Come here.”

I stretched out on top of him and let him kiss me dizzy. I knew it was just biology, but when I felt him get hard, it made me feel like a million bucks. Like maybe if I could do that to him, I wasn't so gross. And I didn't know why I had said I wasn't sure he thought I was pretty, because I knew he did. I just didn't know why and I probably shouldn't have cared. I tried to tick a list of things off in my head that maybe made him like me. I guessed my skin wasn't disgusting. Sam had acne pretty bad sometimes, but she still looked beautiful with zits on her face. My hair was wild, so maybe he was really into that. I knew he liked touching it a lot, so maybe that's all it took; because other than that, I had no idea what it was about me that he found good enough to be in love with.

Later, after we had to put our clothes back on because it started getting too cool in the cabin to be buck naked, Gary said something crazy.

“You know, if we were in the eighteen hundreds, we'd probably have a couple of kids by now.” He told me, ruffling my hair.

He was sitting on one end of the little couch in the corner and I was stretched out with my head in his lap. We had been real quiet, just enjoying the silence like we sometimes did, and he came out of nowhere with that. I wasn't sure what to say, but I kind of wanted to say thank the maker we weren't in the eighteen hundreds. That's not what I ended up saying, though.

“How many kids do you want?” I asked, rolling onto my back so I could look up at him. “Because if we have kids at all, I only want one. Two, tops.”

“I want whatever you want.” He shrugged. “I could have one or I could have six. It don't matter to me.”

“Why?” I asked, trying to look annoyed when really I was just joking. “Because you know I'll be the one taking care of 'em.”

“No.” He laughed, shaking his head. “I think I'd be an okay dad.”

“I think you'd be a great dad.” I told him, honestly.

His fingers tangled in my hair again and he started gnawing on his lip, looking out the window.

“What's the matter with you?” I asked.

“Nothing.” He shook his head, giving me a smile and running the tip of his finger down my cheek. “I was just thinking, mom and daddy's anniversary's coming up.”

“Oh, that's right.” I said, remembering that Eileen had joked the other day that she hoped she got jewelry this year, even though she didn't know where the hell she'd wear it, except around the house.

“Yeah.” He mumbled. “It's been... what? Twenty-two years, I think.”

“That's crazy.” I said. “Are you sure?”

“I think so.” He shrugged. “Why?”

“I don't think they're old enough.” I told him.

“Well, mom was only sixteen.” He said. “Dad was eighteen. My grandma had to sign a form giving her permission to marry him.”

“But she finished high school and went to college.” I said. I must've looked like I was trying to do some kind of complicated math problem in my head.

“They just really wanted to marry each other.” He told me, giving me a real serious look. “Kinda like I really wanna' marry you.”

I did that really stupid thing again where you laugh when you're not supposed to because you don't know what else to do. Lucky for me, Gary knew better than just about anybody what an idiot I was, so he just smiled at me.

“I'm serious.” He gave a little chuckle, flicking his earlobe with his index finger, a little uneasy.

One time when I was in kindergarten or maybe first grade, somebody real important had gotten married. I couldn't remember who, some huge celebrity or maybe somebody in the royal family. I don't know. But my teacher matched us all up and we had little weddings right there in the spot where we had reading time. There was one more boy than there were girls in my class and I remember that some little red haired girl got to get married twice and all of us other girls were jealous. But I got to marry some little boy that had bright white blonde hair and I remembered thinking that he wasn't very cute and if I ever did get married, I'd want to marry the guy on General Hospital that Mama loved so much. The one who ran the mob.

Gary didn't look that much like that guy—whoever he was—but I wouldn't mind being Mrs. Gary Dulworth. Or maybe Jobie Newsome-Dulworth. I wasn't sure.

“What, like now?” I asked, feeling the skin over my temples get tight from how high I'd raised my eyebrows.

“Well.” Gary lifted one corner of his mouth and winked at me in that way he did when he knew he was being cute and I wouldn't be able to be mad at him. “Not right this very second.”

I sat up and spun around so that I was facing him. And then when he didn't stop smiling, I smacked him in the chest and he had to pretend that I had really genuinely hurt him when we both knew it was barely a tap against all that muscle.

“You're crazy.” I told him, shaking my head. “You are really, truly insane. You need to go to Western State. I'm worried about you. I really am.”

“Is that a no?” He asked, still laughing.

“Is that a no?” I repeated after him. “It's not a no because you're not asking me.”

“I'm not?” He tilted his head to the side like a confused puppy and reaching down into a milk crate that was sitting beside the couch. “What's this, then?”

He was holding one of those little black velvet boxes that you saw rings in at jewelry stores. It was a little dusty from sitting in that box, which meant that Gary had been hiding it there for a while or maybe just that the box was real dusty. I had a good idea what was inside, but the wire that went from the part of my brain that knew what it was to the part that would make my mouth say what it was must've had a crack or a short or a tear or something in it, because I looked at it liked I'd never seen anything like it in my life and had no idea what it was or what was in it or why he had it or even what the hell we'd been talking about.

“What is it?” I asked, looking from his hand to his face and back.

“Open it.” He pushed it forward a little bit.

“You open it.” I argued.

“Alright.” He chuckled, flicking the top of the box open with his thumb like it was a Zippo lighter.

Inside this little slot covered in white satin was tucked the sweetest looking silver band with the sweetest looking round cut diamond I'd ever seen. It was so simple and so perfect that I might've thought I'd picked it out myself if I'd ever thought about picking out something like that. It wasn't too big and it wasn't too small. It was just right, like all of the baby bear's stuff in the story about Goldilocks. I must've stared at it for way too long because Gary's voice jolted me out of my haze.

“Say something.” He said when I finally looked up at him.

He wasn't smiling so big anymore. As a matter of fact, he looked weird. Like maybe he still thought I was being hilarious, but he was also a little scared, and maybe also he was regretting getting out that little black box with the perfect little ring inside.

“I...uh...” I stammered. “What's happening right now?”

He laughed again, his eyes closing and those long, dark lashes of his sweeping the tops of his cheeks.

“Do you wanna' marry me or not?” He asked, grabbing my left hand and pressing his lips against my knuckles. “I'll die if you say no. I'll just... I'll die. And you're gonna' feel really bad.”

Now I was laughing and before I knew it, I'd launched into him and had my hands on his face and my lips on his and I didn't even know why I was so happy, but my mood had really done a one-eighty from that morning and the day before. After I finally let him pry me off of him, he slid the ring on my finger and I stared at it for what must've been forever. As soon as it touched me, I just knew it wasn't gonna' fit. I knew it'd be too small because I had sausage fingers and they weren't dainty or delicate at all. But it fit perfectly and I wondered how he'd figured that out.

“Mama's gonna' kill me.” I finally said. “Or you. No, not you. But she'll kill me.”

“I already talked to her.” Gary said, looking chock full of himself. “She's the one that told me what kind of ring to get.”

“No she did not!” I yelled, slapping my hand over my mouth.

“Yes she did.” Gary nodded his head up and down. “She said I didn't have to get a huge rock, but not to get a fake one because you'd know the difference.”

I didn't think I'd know the difference, but then again, I wasn't sure if I'd ever seen a real diamond or not. I didn't know if the engagement ring that Daddy had given Mama was real or not because I'd never asked and it was in her jewelry box. She never wore it anymore. But I was just shocked that somebody thought I was important enough to buy a diamond ring for.

“I have to finish school first.” I told him, looking up from my left ring finger. “And I don't want anything big, but I don't want to just go to the courthouse, either.”

He grinned at me and wrapped his arm around my neck, pulling me to him. His lips pressed a bunch of little kisses against my forehead and I thought I was just gonna' explode. A couple months before, I didn't even know I'd ever be in love with Gary. I didn't know I'd want to marry him, much less anybody. Now I was trying to count down the days in my head, calculating how I could make the time go faster. There were a couple of classes that I could maybe test out of, but I wasn't very confident in my ability to do that. And I wouldn't be eighteen until the following May. Something told me that no matter how happy Mama was gonna' be for us, it'd be a cold day in hell before she signed a paper letting me get married before I was eighteen.

“We can do whatever you want.” He told me. “Name it.”

“Don't tell me that.” I grinned at him. “You don't want me to start making a list.”

“Make it.” He challenged, looking at me in all seriousness. “I'll get it done. We may be old and gray before I do, but I'll get it done.”

“Why do you love me so much?” I asked him.

I'd asked him that about a million times, and he'd never given me a straight answer. He usually said it was because he just did or because he thought I was beautiful or because I was so nice or so smart or some other stuff he probably just thought of off the top of his head to get me to shut up or something. But I really truly wanted to know. Because maybe if he could love me that much, I wasn't so bad.

“Because you're the closest thing to perfect I've ever seen in my whole life.” He told me after thinking about it for a second. When I just looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language, he said “You snuck up on me. You showed up from outta nowhere. One day, there's somebody moving into the house down the street and all of a sudden, she's the best friend I've ever had.”

I stared at him and didn't say anything, because I didn't want him to stop talking. That was the most perfect thing anybody had ever said to me in my whole life. Somebody should've paid him, I thought, to write for those movies where the guy gets the girl in the end after you didn't think he would. Because he was winning a lot of points right then.

“I remember the first time I saw you.” He said. “Do you remember?”

I shook my head.

“We were on the school bus.” He said, spreading out the fingers on one hand and holding his arm out like he wanted to set the scene. “Sam was sitting all by herself because everybody thinks she's weird. Because she is.”

I laughed.

“And you just plopped down right next to her like you owned the place.” He remembered. “And instead of just sitting there and minding your own business, you introduced yourself and you two were best friends ten seconds later.”

“Where were you?” I asked.

“In the back.” He told me, jerking his thumb toward the wall behind us. “Staring at you.”

I smiled at him and thought about that for a minute. The first time I remembered meeting Gary was when I stayed at Sam's for one of the first times and she dragged me all the way across the field between their houses and out to the stable so I could see all the horses. I thought it was probably just about the greatest life anybody could ever live, taking care of thoroughbreds. And I remembered thinking he looked a lot older than we were and then finding out that he was just a grade ahead of me.

“I feel like I've been staring at you ever since.” He said.

“Well.” I took a big, deep breath in through my nose and let it out, letting my shoulders rise and fall with it. “I guess I'll start staring at you some so I can catch up.”

He laughed at that and told me that he guessed that'd only be fair.

By the time the rain stopped, the sun was starting to go down and Gary wiped all the water off of the four wheeler seat with one of the blankets that was in the cabin. We rode back to the house so he could take me home in his truck, but Mama's car was in the driveway when we got there, so we went inside instead. Eileen and Mama were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and chatting away like they didn't even hear us coming. Finally Gary cleared his throat and they both looked up like we'd startled them.

“What are y'all hens in here clucking about?” He asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Careful, boy.” Eileen pointed at him with the end of her spoon, but smiled at him anyway. “Anything interesting happen since you two left here earlier?”

“It rained.” I offered.

“She's so funny.” Eileen looked at Mama, laughing softly.

“She's a laugh a minute.” Mama played along. “Anything else?”

“It also stopped raining.” Gary said.

“Y'all are killing me.” Eileen dropped her spoon on the napkin next to her coffee cup. “Tell me!”

It clicked in my head all of a sudden that if my Mama knew, then surely so did his. And then I thought that if they both knew, then maybe Gary told one of them when he was gonna' ask—if he knew—and that one of them told the other and they'd been waiting there all that time to see what my answer had been. I didn't know how or what Gary had told either of them to let them know, and I especially didn't know when, but I decided to let 'em sweat it out a little bit longer and I was so happy that Gary was on the same page, I could barely stand it.

“Tell you what?” Gary asked, trying to look as sad as he could. “There's nothing to tell.”

Mama's face fell and Eileen was almost pouting.

“Yeah, I actually don't really feel like talking about it.” I threw in for good measure. “I kinda just wanna' go home.”

Gary leaned away from me a little bit and nodded his head, but I could see that he was biting down on the insides of his cheeks to keep from grinning.

“You're not even gonna' drive her home, Gary!” Eileen hissed at him, whispering like I wasn't there and able to hear her clearly.

“I don't want him to drive me home.” I said, shoving my left arm towards Mama and waving my hand for her, telling her I wanted her to do it. “Come on.”

I didn't know what I expected, but when Mama screamed like a banshee, I hadn't been fully prepared and jumped about a mile high. I had to throw myself into a chair across from her because she yanked my hand so hard I thought it was gonna' fall onto the table if I didn't. Gary sat next to me, laughing when Eileen threw a napkin at his head, scolding him for scaring her like that. They were just sure that he'd asked and I said no and one of us had dumped the other. Then they started arguing playfully because Eileen thought Gary was so full of himself, he'd be the one to dump me to save his pride and Mama thought I'd dump him from embarrassment from saying no.

“She's finishing school.” Mama told Gary the same thing I'd told him.

“And you're not dragging her to the courthouse.” Eileen added, echoing another of my conditions.

He laughed, nodding his head.

We left them to gab themselves to death and Gary took me home. For whatever reason, I was really excited to tell Heather, and not only because I knew she'd be a jealous wreck.